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About Jackson herald. (Jefferson, Jackson County, Ga.) 1881-current | View Entire Issue (March 29, 2023)
PAGE 4A THE JACKSON HERALD WEDNESDAY, MARCH 29, 2023 Opinions “Private opinion is weak, but public opinion is almost omnipotent. Henry Ward Beecher Mike Buffington, editor • Email: Mike@mainstreetnews.com Judicial musical chairs effort upsets everyone involved A move to have Banks County moved out of the Pied mont Judicial Circuit and into the Mountain Judicial Circuit (Habersham, Rabun and Stephens counties) is apparently dead for this year. Some Banks County leaders have long wanted to have the county pulled from the Piedmont Circuit, which also in cludes Jackson and Barrow counties. There is a gener al feeling in Banks County that Piedmont District At torney Brad Smith ignores the community and doesn't put enough resources into the local court system. Smith, who hails from Barrow County, also isn't very popular in Jackson County among some county leaders who consider him to be, as one official told me, “lazy.” Of course. Jackson and Banks counties could change that dynamic by collectively getting behind another attorney to ran against Smith, if any attorney wanted to give up their private prac tice to become a prosecutor. Those two counties have the votes to oust Smith if they wanted, a move that seems less dramatic than simply moving to another circuit where Banks would still be the smallest county in the mix. But this effort has apparently taking on a new dimension in recent weeks. There was reportedly some effort in the General Assembly last week to have the Banks legislation, which had passed the Senate and was in the House, amended to disband the Piedmont Judicial Circuit and move Jackson and Barrow counties into a circuit with Clarke County (and to move Oconee County to another nearby circuit and out of the Circuit with Clarke.) ft’s not clear, at least to this writer, exactly who was behind that effort. Lawyers in the Piedmont Circuit were reportedly atwitter with speculation about the effort, which came out of the blue and apparently hadn’t been discussed with county leaders in advance. In the end. that idea didn't happen and is reportedly dead for this legislative session (which ended Wednesday, after the deadline for this column). ft may be dead for now, but the politics of the move are abundantly clear and likely to return — putting Jackson and Barrow with Clarke County was a naked effort to oust Clarke’s controversial Democratic DA, Deborah Gonzalez, by diluting the Democratic-leaning Clarke vote with two heavy GOP-leaning counties. • •• Make no mistake, this is a big deal and is a major part of this year’s legislative move to create an oversight panel that will have the power to remove district attorneys deemed to be incompetent. That move was led by Georgia legislative Republicans and was opposed by most Democrats. To many in the national media covering the legislation, it was framed as being targeted at Democratic DA Fanni Wil lis of Fulton County, who is investigating former President Donald Tramp’s efforts to meddle in Georgia’s 2020 elec tion following his loss to Joe Biden. Tramp made controver sial calls to leading Georgia elected officials in a bid to have them overturn the 2020 election results and name him as the state’s winner rather than Biden. Some Democrats see the DA oversight legislation as a tool being prepared by Republicans to oust Willis should Tramp be indicted in Fulton County. While that probe is important (and bigger than the New York probe into Tramp’s alleged payoff to a pom star), the DA oversight legislation has more to do with Gonzalez in Clarke County than Willis in Fulton. Why? Consider that Gov. Brian Kemp, a supporter of the over sight legislation, is a native of Clarke County and is very familiar with the Gonzalez controversy, having been sued by Gonzalez in 2020 over his efforts to cancel a special elec tion that eventually led to her election (Gonzalez won her suit against Kemp in the Georgia Supreme Court that year); Rep. Houston Gaines of Athens (whose district covers part of Jackson and Barrow counties) has faced Gonzalez on the ballot a couple of times and has been the main player in the oversight committee legislation in the House; and Sen. Bo Hatchett is one of Kemp’s Senate floor leaders and was the lead sponsor of the Banks County move legislation. The picture that emerges from all that is this: Some in the GOP may want to use an oversight council to defend former President Tramp in the Fulton County probe, but the real heavyweights in the state behind the legislation all have con nections to the Gonzalez issue and to the Piedmont Judicial Circuit. Ousting Gonzalez is the primary goal and the reported move to lump Jackson and Barrow into a circuit with Clarke was part and parcel to that effort. ••• But why oust Gonzalez? Her critics — and there are many — accuse her of being incompetent. And they have some evidence to back up that assertion. Gonzalez was elected as a “progressive” district attorney in 2020, for example, vowing to not prosecute low-level drag cases tied to addiction. She's an advocate of “restor ative justice” and even had the circuit's juvenile court divi sion renamed to reflect that interest. (Rather than the “get tough” approach to crime, restorative justice is a softer ap proach which seeks to help both the victim and offender.) But Gonzalez had no criminal law experience when she was elected DA. previously having been an entertainment lawyer. Since being elected DA, Gonzalez's office has been in dis array with a huge amount of staff and assistant DA turnover. She and her office have lost important cases at trial and a lot of cases haven’t been sent to a grand jury in a timely manner. Earlier this month, an Athens businessman filed suit against Gonzalez alleging she’s not doing her job; a court hearing on that is set in early April. Judges in the circuit have also been critical of Gonzalez and media outlets in Clarke and Oconee counties have blis tered her with reporting about the turmoil in her office. She doesn't have a lot of defenders rushing to side, either. • •• Gonzalez may be incompetent. She says it’s a lack of funding that is causing her staffing problems, but that may just be an excuse and not a reason. Still, the stealth move to upend the Piedmont Circuit and to use Jackson and Barrow as pawns in a bid to oust Gonza lez was unseemly and politically dumb. One Jackson County leader told me that while county leaders aren't happy with Piedmont DA Smith, throwing Jackson in with Clarke wasn't the solution. On top of that, county leaders reportedly weren’t consulted about the possi ble move and only heard about it through the political grape vine. The move is apparently dead for now, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it resurfaced again next year. Banks County will still seek to leave the Piedmont Circuit, a move that could open the door for reassigning Barrow and Jackson with Clarke. But there’s still a lot of ball to be played between now and the 2024 legislative session. Gonzalez could be ousted before then via other means and 2024 is an election year so angering Jackson and Barrow leaders probably wouldn’t be good politics. Meanwhile, the entire mess has left a bad taste in every one’s mouth and nobody’s happy with the outcome. Mike Buffington is co-publisher of Mainstreet Newspa pers. He can be reached at mike@mainstreetnews.com. Political differences aren’t racially ingrained Dear Editor: In now way, shape, or form should this be construed as any type of defense of Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s recent tweets. The congresswoman, in my opinion, serves mostly as a counter weight to several repre sentatives out on the Left side of the scale. I’d like to think that her noise drowns out the noise coming from the likes of A.O.C., Adam Schiff, and Maxine Waters. Mike Buffington’s recent editorial on Greene's recent tweets calling for a Nation al Divorce along political lines implied that Greene was advocating for a divorce along racial lines. Yes, Greene often comes across as a flake and an embarrassment to Georgia, however, to equate her personal and singu lar call for a National Divorce, Blue Nation and Red Nation, to some evidence of in creasing extremism taking hold of the GOP, is a reflection of an increasing bias taking hold in the liberal media in this country. When I read Greene's tweets, race nev er entered my mind; Red States and Blue States entered my mind, nothing more, nothing less. Your editorial seemed to be a random mix of opinions and truths in search of a point. In a way, it reminded me of a point that Biden once tried to make with his remark, “Poor kids are just as bright as White kids”. Conflation, however intended, is never constructive. In trying to understand Greene’s tweets, it is probably best to avoid departing too far from what she actually said. It certainly isn't productive to put words into her tweets, nor change the meaning of the words that she used. Red isn't White, and Blue isn’t Black and Brown. Red, Blue, and Purple, in the political, are nothing more than a Venn dia gram, with all the overlap. Sadly, we too of ten focus on the outer reaches of the groups, to the exclusion of the overlap. There is a fringe “White nationalism” within the Red circle, and a fringe “Black nationalism” within the Blue. One fringe group wants its own nation in the Pacific Northwest, the other wants its own nation in the Southeast. Neither of these two hate groups occupy the center of either circle; both groups are on the fringes, where they’ve always been and should remain. Between those two fringe groups, and between those two corners of the country, exists a huge expanse of com monality, if we can only find our way back to finding it, or even looking for it. Buffington's editorial began on race and segregation, shifted to demographics and housing, and ended on political affiliation. As is so often the case, the use of vague historical reference and statistical citation, in the absence of any discussion on cause and effect, or context, deprives discourse of achieving any remedy. So many people in Blue cities (Democrat governed) across this country suffer with high crime, failing schools, and a general lack of opportunity. Leftist District Attor neys, backed by George Soros and the DNC, refuse to prosecute crime. As crime rates rise, more and more corporations chose to leave one Blue city after another. Just this week. Cracker Barrel followed Walmart in closing every location in Portland, Oregon; Walgreens continues to shutter stores in San Francisco; hundreds of thousands of people are leaving Illinois, New York, New Jersey, and California, most of them choosing to live in a Red State. I'm pretty sure this is what Greene was attempting to say with her tweets, not that I agree with her. In the middle of your column, you wrote: “For one thing, housing prices alone create socio-economic and demographic segrega tion.” Anybody who sincerely desires to ad dress disparities in home ownership in 2023 America has to concentrate on the small paragraph in your column just below that, “And over the last couple of decades, this demographic divide has also come to reflect different political values and CHOICES.” Along racial lines, White, Black, and His panic, the respective percentages of home ownership in the U.S. run virtually parallel to the respective percentages of single par ent households, albeit inverted. Those with two incomes buy homes, those with one in come rent, demographics and government statistics bare that out. For children living in single-parent homes, the odds of living in poverty are great, regardless of race. Red and Blue, in my opinion, mostly de note differing values related to several so cio-economic factors: Family, education, work ethic, controlled borders/immigra tion. law and order, and love of country/ community. Unlike Greene, and others on the fringes, I recognize and appreciate the overlap. Sincerely, Ron Peavey Jefferson The biscuits By Ronda Rich In our family, no food is held in higher esteem than the bis cuit. Combread runs a close second but there's an art to mak ing a biscuit that the easy-going, non-frills combread does not require. As you can imagine, when we eat out, we have high expec tations of the biscuit — though, I will tell you, that McDon ald’s has figured out a biscuit that has crispy edges and is just the right size. Waffle House, which doesn’t have an oven in any of its over 2,000 restaurants, delivers a delicious biscuit, especially when covered in its yummy sausage gravy. My dear friend, Walt Ehmer, is President of Waffle House and he told me years ago, when they introduced biscuits, “We weren’t going to do them until we could do them right.” They bring in pre-baked biscuits then they grill them hot, with butter. Oh. My. Yes. they figured it out. As any biscuit maker knows, there are all kinds of biscuits. Big, fluffy biscuits: ones that are flatter and crispier; tiny bis cuits. A couple of years ago, Tink and I were having a rare supper party. I had planned salad, lasagna, and homemade lemon pie. An old friend and his brother stopped by a couple of hours before dinner. We were delighted to see them, talking of years past and all the people we’ve known. The conversation edged into the time for our company arrived. In the South, we never turn anyone away. So, I thought frantically. “We have company coming for lasagna. Would you like to stay? We’d be delighted.” The brothers looked at each other, shrugging, “We’d love to.” I panicked. I had prepared dinner for six. How did I expand? Southern women are resourceful. I had never done it before but I decided to make tiny, cheese biscuits as appetizers. It was a new trick, bom out of des peration. When you live in the country, you figure out what to do because you often can’t ran to the grocery store. You work with what you have. I always have flour, buttermilk, and cheese. The result was stupendous. One brother, a former NCAA basketball coach, sat at the island as I shaped the tiny biscuits, eating them one after another, as they came out of the oven. “These may be the best appetizer I’ve ever tasted,” He chewed and savored with quiet joy. Thank goodness. Nervously, I hoped the scrumptious bites would fill their bellies so as to stretch the lasagna to two more people. And it did. With remainders. Biscuit places pop up all the time. Several months ago, we had someone take over a defunct restaurant. We were all ex cited and soon talk made its way across town about how deli cious the biscuits were. It is painful that most young, married women are clueless how to make a biscuit so the market is wide and broad, especially for men looking for their Mama’s biscuits. This new place is called Biscuit Bam, Biscuit Place, or some such. My brother-in-law, Rodney, knows a good biscuit. His Grandmama, his mama and my sister have plied him with plenty of delicious biscuits. He's an expert. So, naturally, he stopped at the new biscuit place. He wait ed 20 minutes to order — not because the line was long or the staff was too slow. When finally they took his order, he remarked, “I've been waiting 20 minutes.” (He was kind. I know Rodney. ) The girl, covered in tattoos and wearing a nose ring, looked bored. She replied, “Do you know how many biscuit places there are between here and the next town?” Obviously, she’s not the one who faces the banker each month, who worries over paying the bills or utilities. If you ran into a problem finding a good biscuit, you’re wel come to the Rondarosa where our biscuits have become so famous that a food company has asked to duplicate them. We won't send you on down the road. Ronda Rich is the best-selling author of What Southern Women Know (That Every Woman Should). Visit www.rond- atich.com to sign up for her free weekly newsletter. The Jackson Herald Founded 1875 Merged with The Commerce News 2017 The Official Legal Organ of Jackson County, Ga. Herman Buffington, Publisher 1965-2005 Mike Buffington Co-Publisher Scott Buffington Co-Publisher Alex Buffington News Editor Hannah Barron Reporter Tavlor Hearn Snorts Editor Postmaster: Send Address Changes To: MainStreet Newspapers, Inc. PO Box 908 Jefferson, Georgia 30549-0908 Periodical Postage paid at Jefferson, GA 30549 (SCED 271980) Yearly Subscriptions: $45 / $40 for seniors
